


early heaven

by GraceEliz, Ro29



Series: Lives Happen in Spirals [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, And how claiming culture doesn't always feel right or like it's deserved, Babies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, Fluff, Gen, Good Dad Boba Fett, I stand by it, POV Second Person, Platonic Relationships, The difficulties that come from being an outsider of the culture of your childhood, and how culture can be difficult when you've spent longer without it than with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28735158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29
Summary: You hold her in your two hands, breathe out and think, ‘Oh.’
Relationships: Boba Fett & Original Child Character(s), Boba Fett & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lives Happen in Spirals [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051664
Kudos: 31





	early heaven

**Author's Note:**

> I know we said we were done but uh......We Lied.
> 
> Anyways, Welcome to Ro projects onto Boba Fett and Grace and Ro both lose it over Soft Dad with tiny baby.
> 
> A happy family is but an early heaven.

Your name is Boba Fett.

Your father is, _was_ , Jango Fett and you once had millions of almost brothers, millions of maybe’s and could haves and might have been.

(You are alone now. The last Fett.)

Your name is Boba Fett and your father was a Mandalorian and a foundling and it is written into the chain code of your armour and the essence of the man who exists now only in your memory and in the destruction he left in his wake.

You are Boba Fett and here is a secret, that is maybe not really a secret:

You have never been quite Mandalorian enough, despite everything, despite all you know of your _buir_. The language, the bits and pieces you used to know when you were younger, when _buir_ was still around to teach you, have long since slipped away. Leaving you with this amalgamation of all that you have managed to hold onto with the tips of bloodied fingers and clenched fists, and here is the second piece of your secret, which you hold deep down with your fear and hope:

It is not enough.

Children unlearn things so quickly, when they have no one around to help them keep it.

You are holding the last pieces of your father’s culture in your hands, like sand in a strainer, and trying desperately to keep it cradled there.

Can’t bring yourself to try and shrug it on like the armour you’ve cared for and kept close, can’t reach out and claim it, not when it doesn’t belong to you.

Your father’s culture, your father’s armour, your father’s mistakes and teachings hanging over you.

You are your father’s son in everything but this, you are your father’s son and your father’s mistakes, but his culture and his language are things you are not sure you are allowed to have.

It is a strange way to live. This feeling of outcastedness isn’t unfamiliar to you, you’ve been one for too long, but it aches all the same. It aches in the same way that Fox’s plates do, hidden under your bunk, and the faded gold paint on Bly’s thighplate that is now yours - and why is it easier to hold this, those tiny shards of your brother-clone’s culture? What is fair about this, that your past is a sum of mistakes of a broken man? It aches like a much-broken bone.

Even more so now, in the quiet of the morning, as you watch Bria and her children.

You are here for the moment, you are staying despite the thing in your chest that wants you to go, to leave and fly away from this good thing so you will not wreck it, to keep this one thing safe from your monstrous hands.

You are staying and you do not know how to be a parent, you do not have anything to pass down to these children except for blood and death and suffering.

You watch the children and their mother and you wonder if it’s possible to be _dar’manda_ when you were never really Mandalorian to begin with.

* * *

You are wandering the small village, more abandoned than inhabited and there is a cry from one of the houses. You pause and you think, ‘ _someone will comfort it, someone will be there to love it and care for it.’_ After all, everyone knows everyone in this tiny place, and it isn’t only your advancements (and you wish you could spit them out of you and be ordinary and safe and not a monster) that let you hear it. Other people can hear, and surely someone must act.

The crying doesn’t stop.

You wonder if the child’s parents are dead or if they’ve been taken, you wonder if they just left once they realized they wouldn’t be able to care for it.

It’s Tatooine after all, there are so many possibilities. But surely this is not one. Nobody, not even the monster you are, would just leave a child. You never have, surely, even you.

The child’s voice is high pitched and you think it must be a baby, you move before you can really think.

The house is empty and there is a baby on the bed, wrapped in a blanket and sobbing.

You pick the baby up and they open their eyes, their sobbing turning into hiccups as you cradle them gently, carefully, like you will break them.

You hum softly, sway back and forth to rock them gently, lift a hand up and ghost it over their small face.

They latch onto you, tiny fist wrapped around your finger and gurgling.

You hold her in your two hands, breathe out and think, _‘Oh.’_

* * *

Bria finds you sat in the dust, the baby in your lap. It — it's smaller than your two hands. You dare not move because how can so tiny a creature even exist?

Bly would know what to do, or Fox. One of your brothers who knew what soft and kind and gentle meant, could press it into being and replicate it better than you could even when your hands were child’s hands, small and smooth.

"Boba?"

When she speaks, your name sounds like something pleasant. "It's so small," you whisper, and you wonder — did _buir_ feel like this with you in his arms?

Were you this immediately cherished? You can't even imagine letting the tiny creature out of your sight.

"I know her," Bria says quietly. "Her parents died recently."

You hover a finger over her face as though to trace the bridge of her tiny nose — but you will surely break her if you do, your rough hands with no sense of gentleness.

"She's tiny."

The child stirs, a thin wail rising up like heat-haze, and you freeze stiff, suddenly aware that this — this is not what you were meant for. A soldier is not designed to hold a baby. Bria places a hand on your back and reaches out, a question in her eyes.

You pass her the little one and can feel all the easily breakable bones and muscles and nerves under your fingers like a burn.

She smiles down at the child and Stars help you, but the sight of Bria holding the child — not your foundling, not yours, that isn't something you can have — stirs the deepest coal of your heart.

"You have to swaddle them this young, like this," she says as she tucks the corners of the blanket away, and lifts the baby to rest against her shoulder, swaying and humming.

She looks perfect, holding the little girl, so perfect and you think — _I can't do that._ There is nothing about you made for softness.

“The pressure of the blankets will help her to sleep,” she tells you, and you wonder at the wealth of experience one woman can have to say such a thing so firmly, “then when you hold her, she will feel safe. Would you like to try?”

_Yes._ “Not yet,” is what leaves you in a rasp like you’ve never drunk in your life. Not yet isn’t a no, but it gives you the time you need to brace yourself up to saying yes. It is only a child.

No child is ever only a child.

* * *

“Buir?”

You gesture the child in, with his blanket trailing behind him and that ragged bantha tight in his hand. Without hesitating, as though you are safe and secure and someone who deserves to be considered a safe-place for small children, Nari reaches his arms up to you. He is small too, not as small as the baby you found, but still something extremely tiny. He nestles against your chest when you pick him up.

“Who is the baby?”

“I found her.”

He hums, gnawing at his bantha. His teeth are changing, falling out and growing new. “Is she staying?”

You don’t say anything in response - you have nothing to say about it. Together, the two of you sit on the bed and listen to Bria and the baby and the slow noises of happening things in her little kitchen. Rilen and Nera are puttering about too, bickering as they always do over nothings just like you remember your brothers doing; Bria says it’s because Rilen is growing up and refusing to let Nera boss him around. As you listen, with the weight of the child on you, a weight you find surprising after the nothingness of the baby, you wonder if perhaps you should use their names more often.

Names have never been something you’re any good at.

“Nari!”

With a heavy sigh, the child stands on your leg and you let him, ignoring the pressure. For a moment you look at each other, and then he very seriously places his hand on your cheek and presses his forehead against your lips, and whilst you are frozen-shocked he slips away.

You have never kissed anyone’s brow.

After a minute Bria walks in, shaking her head at the childrens’ antics, and her smile is like a sunrise. “Would you like to hold her?”

_Yes._

You say nothing, stay sat on the floor by the bed — your bed where you lay recovering with a toddler playing on your shins — and think that somehow this feels like a steeper cliff than anything has ever felt before.

Bria hands you the baby and her gentle hands position yours carefully. The weight of the child is less than nothing, and all you can do is stare. Eyes caught on your weathered, violent, monster’s, hands and the sleeping babe cradled in them.

You can feel your heart relight; feel the mythosaur you once believed you were.

_Thank you._ You want to breathe, _Vor entye._

You stand and it feels like you've taken your heart out of your chest and placed it in this sleeping child's arms.

You reach for a name to give her, come up with nothing and feel the press of _Buir-Fox-Bly-Wolffe-Cody_ looming in your past, eyes on your future.

You lean down, press your forehead to her tiny fragile one.

You wonder if this was how it felt for _buir_ when he held you and realized you were his.

* * *

Her crying is stronger now than it was earlier, and you would like to say that you woke before Bria did, but that would be a lie.

You haven’t slept, listening and listening to three tiny breaths and one small breath and one medium breath around you, filling the room — her room — with a feeling you lost decades ago.

It takes moments to reach her and that is when you hesitate, in the not-chill of the night air in the dark of the bedroom. Everything about her is just so small.

You hold her in your arms, all tiny limbs and wide eyes and absolute trust. She is so small, barely a weight in your arms, small enough you think you could hold her in your hand and never notice. You could walk like this for hours and days and years and never feel a thing, but part of you knows that if she were to fall you would know before it even happened. If you have any breath left in you she will not fall.

She looks at you and it’s like she doesn’t think, for even a moment, that you will let her down.

She is precious for that trust, unearned and freely given, small hands wrapped around your fingers, face soft and innocent.

She gurgles softly and yawns, tiny fists rubbing at her face.

She deserves the universe, you can only give her a name. And even in that you are failing. After all, you didn’t choose your name, _buir_ did; you have never named a brother, you were only their afterthought.

You can feel Bria's eyes on your back and your _buir's_ hand on your shoulder, a memory from decades past.

You press a kiss to her forehead and want to shake at all the ways you know her fragile body can break.

You would protect her with your life, you know, and you wonder if this is what it means to be a _buir_ , to be willing to die and kill and take on every bad thing that might happen to her as your own burden, just so that innocent trust never has to be tainted.

You hold her and you force your calloused hands to be gentle.

All you have ever known how to be is a monster, and there is no amount of falsified gentleness that can change the blood dripping from your fingers. But you can try. You are good at the trying, at the wanting something and reaching for it with everything you have. It’s the having that you never seem to get right.

She fusses and it pulls you out of your head, brings you back to the present, to this moment with her in your arms and the love in your heart threatening to overwhelm you.

There’s shifting on the bed behind you and then silence until finally —

“Boba?”

Bria’s voice is groggy and a smile grows on your face. Soft and gentle and free from all your sharp edges and rock-like brutality that has kept you alive this long. “She cried.”

She hums. “They do. Thank you for getting up for her.”

“Of course,” you answer, as if it is obvious, as though you can’t comprehend not going to her when she cries, as indeed you can’t.

A soft huff, “Better than some,” she mutters and you remember that her three children came from somewhere, and cringe.

“What—”

Bria sits up, rubbing her jaw. “Hungry, probably. There’s some milk in the kitchen, but we need to get something better, probably. She is very little.”

You have noticed. You have very definitely noticed that this baby is very little.

If you had dreamed you think it would've haunted you, that smallness.

After the milk is warmed, and Bria is sleep-soft and curled back in her bed around the tiny forms of her children - or maybe, now, they are your children, yours together - you stand over the cradle found for your baby with her head cradled in your palm and hum. Vibrations rumble your chest, buzzing your teeth, and you try to remember the exact tone of Buir’s voice. Sweet, you think, but perhaps you’re wrong, perhaps his voice was just a normal voice.

She gurgles up at you and you can’t help the way your lips curl up, can’t help the thing in your chest that warms over and spills out.

“Like it when I sing to you?” You ask her, and she waves her little limbs, face round and soft and eyes wide and demanding.

You huff, so very fond, “Alright little love.”

You pick her up and can’t help the snort as she looks up at you, hits her little fists against your chest.

“You’re going to be a menace when you get older,” you tell her and you want, desperately, to see it, to watch her grow.

She fusses, and you huff, enchanted despite yourself.

When you were small, _buir_ used to wrap you in his arms, hold you in his lap when things were bad, or when you just needed to be close to him, to know you were loved. You would rest your head on his chest, ear to his heart, and he would sing. He'd hold you in his arms and he'd sing to you a song that he'd sung for as long as you know and the world would fall back into place.

You try to sing for her, this sweet child who owns your heart and all the good parts of your soul, who all the monstrous parts of you will rage and kill and rip muscles from bones and tear bloody teeth into others to protect.

You reach for that song from your childhood and something in your chest breaks when nothing comes.

You do not remember how it goes.

You never realized you'd forgotten it, that it had slipped away at some point, between your childhood and now.

You'd never realized how much that song meant until you reach for it and all that is there is the faint memory of _buir's_ chest rumbling, arms around you.

Children forget so much as they grow.

* * *

The second sun is just rising, and the air is warming from the night chill and the sands are still cool enough that Bria has allowed Nera to take Nari outside to play, so you sit on her front step with your baby in one arm and Rilen, in all his growing-child curiosity, leaning on your other.

“Will she be big?”

You hum. Truthfully, you have no idea.

He hooks his tiny chin over your arm. “When she’s bigger, can I teach her to shoot?”

“No,” you immediately answer, hard and sharp, but Rilen only sighs and leans in to touch her nose softly. She scrunches up her face, creasing her little forehead.

He sighs, his mother’s lips pursed up. “Can I teach her to hunt?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Rilen settles against your side in satisfaction. “What is her name?” he asks, and you don’t have an answer to give yet. Something nice, you think; a good name. A safe name, a kind name. “Do you have any ideas?”

You tip your head, smiling as she grasps at your finger and gurgles again, blows bubbles out her tiny mouth. “Something that suits her. Something that means innocent maybe,” you say, and you say it you think _yes, something pure and clean like new-forged beskar._

The boy makes a noise. “Maybe mum will have some ideas.”

Yes, maybe.

* * *

Bria hums when you ask her. Holds the baby in her arms, smiles down at her and gentle shakes the finger the little one has caught in her tiny fist.

"Katin?" Bria asks and you shake your head, think of nights spent alone where ' _k'atini'_ was the only word you would whisper, one of the few from your father's language that you remember.

_It's only pain._

You do not want to give her a name like that.

Bria hums, laughs a little and shakes her head, "I was going to suggest Bareea, but that might end up confusing us all."

You shrug and there is silence once more. Your arms ache for their emptiness and under your skin there is an itch to reach out and keep the little one in your arms until she no longer fits.

"Karuli," Bria says, sudden and perfect.

You roll the name around your mouth, taste it on your tongue, it sits there, lovely and _right_ and fitting.

Karuli, you think, Karul, Karu, _Kara_.

_‘Little star_ ’, you think and you look at her in Bria’s arms and think, ‘ _Yes that’s right, that’s her._ ’

“Yes,” you murmur, meet Bria’s eyes, “Karuli.”

“Well look at that, little one,” she says, voice pitched high as she speaks to the baby, “what a wonderful name for you.”

She presses a kiss to Karuli’s forehead, sways back and forth with her.

The itch under your skin is stronger now, and you reach out in question, Bria’s smile is almost unbearable in it’s softness. She puts Karuli in your arms and you cradle her to your chest.

You lift your hand, big and rough and calloused, and trace a finger down the side of her little face,

“Hello, Kara,” you whisper, feel the nickname stick and settle in your heart, ”hello, my little star.”


End file.
